


i don't sleep 'til it's light (some ghosts float, some are buried alive)

by voidpants



Series: dbh tumblr requests [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor (Detroit: Become Human) is Bad at Feelings, Gen, Past Abuse, connor is bad at boundaries, enemies to less enemies, gavin reed is bad at life, handling trauma badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 01:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidpants/pseuds/voidpants
Summary: Connor isn’t looking right.He’s standing too straight, too still. His eyes are too wide and blank. His face too perfectly pleasant, plasticy. The way he’s moving his hands to rest behind his back is too deliberate.He reminds Gavin of the first time they met, back when he hadn’t deviated yet. Or waspretendinghe hadn’t. Whatever.He looks like a machine.He looks like he’s trying to keep it together and isn’t doing the best job.(or, "Connor has more trauma than sense, and Gavin just wants to sleep.")





	i don't sleep 'til it's light (some ghosts float, some are buried alive)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TearStainedAshes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearStainedAshes/gifts).



Gavin isn’t a heavy sleeper.

Hasn’t been for the last twenty years.

It’s left him chronically sleep-deprived, but he’d rather wake up every half hour from the cats moving around the apartment, or his neighbor’s squeaky door, than to sleep through something he shouldn’t. Again.

(His therapist, when he had one, called it “hypervigilance” and “unhealthy,” but personally he just calls it a reasonable response to past experience.)

So, he’s awake and alert before the second knock even lands on his door.

A quick glance at the alarm clock says that it’s 4:27 in the morning, and God, he’s going to punch whoever thought waking him on fifty minutes of sleep after an eighteen hour shift was a good idea.

He rolls Dumbass gently off his back and onto the bed, and she lets out an angry  _ mrrp  _ in response before falling immediately back asleep. Gavin tries very hard not to be jealous of what amounts to nine pounds of fur and outrageous stupidity.

The apartment is bright outside his bedroom, and he squints, tired eyes irritated by the light as he staggers sluggishly towards the front door, the early morning silence interrupted only by another two knocks, halfhearted and hesitant.

He pulls open the door just as Connor raises his hand to knock again, and no, no, it’s way too early, and he’s way too tired for… much of  _ anything _ , to be entirely fucking honest, but  _ especially  _ interacting with a coworker that he only vaguely tolerates.

“Tin can, it’s four fucking thirty in the morning,” he says, trying to rub the blur from his eyes. “... _ Why _ ?”

“Oh,” Connor says, hand still hanging confused in the air, bland smile on his face. “Sorry, were you sleeping?”

It’s very tempting to just slam the door in his face and go back to bed and stay there for the next twelve hours.

_ Unspeakably  _ tempting.

But the thing is, even fucked up from sleep deprivation, Gavin is an observant son of a bitch. It’s why he’s a good cop.

And Connor isn’t looking right.

He’s standing too straight, too still. His eyes are too wide and blank. His face too perfectly pleasant, plasticy. The way he’s moving his hands to rest behind his back is too deliberate.

He reminds Gavin of the first time they met, back when he hadn’t deviated yet. Or was  _ pretending  _ he hadn’t. Whatever.

He looks like a machine.

He looks like he’s trying to keep it together and isn’t doing the best job.

_ Fuck my life _ , Gavin thinks, sighing as he turns to walk towards the kitchen. He’s going to need the fucking coffee.

Connor closes the front door with a soft click before following him quietly into the apartment, hovering in the doorway to the kitchen as Gavin fucks around with the coffeemaker.

“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Connor says after a couple of minutes, voice carefully even.

“Sure, whatever,” Gavin says, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against a cupboard as he waits for his coffee. “You didn’t tell me why, though.”

Connor goes silent again, and Gavin can feel his eyes boring into the back of his neck. The sensation has the dread crawling up his spine, old and familiar, but it can’t carve through the bone deep exhaustion enough to become real panic, and he can reason against it. Connor won’t hurt him, or at least not in a way that matters.

He doesn’t push, just prepares his coffee, and lets Connor work out whatever he wants to say.

“You…” Connor starts, hesitant, the slightest static cutting into the word. “I am equipped with very advanced psychological assessment software,” he settles on. “The main focus of the programs are of course to estimate a suspect’s likelihood of guilt, and to determine an optimal strategy for interrogation in order to secure a confession, but there are broader applications; my first mission was as a hostage negotiator.”

A pause.

“I’m very good at… seeing trauma, in victims.”

And Gavin’s going to have to stop him right fucking there, because this isn’t going to happen. They’re not friends, and it wouldn’t even  _ matter  _ if they were, because Gavin doesn’t talk about this to  _ anyone _ .

“Well, thanks for the Android Zone marketing bit, it was very interesting,” he says, turning around to face him, watching Connor over the rim of his mug as he takes a sip of coffee. “Do you have a  _ point  _ to this that doesn’t end in me kicking your plastic ass out of my apartment?”

And fuck, Connor’s face crumples, and he looks so goddamn frail and human, wringing his shaking hands, standing in Gavin’s kitchen with tears rolling down his cheeks. “How do you bear it?” he asks, voice anguished in a way he’s never heard it before. “I don’t know- I don’t know what happened to you, but something did. And you- You go to work every day, and you keep it together, and I just- I need to know how? Because I can’t- I can’t seem to find a way for myself?”   


Gavin moves without thinking, the same way he does at a crime scene, faced with a terrified victim or witness; close but not too close, hand careful and light against Connor’s elbow, leading without forcing as he sits him down in one of the kitchen chairs, drags another up for himself with his free hand, maintaining that one simple point of contact.

“I’m supposed to live and be a symbol to my people, but I hear her voice  _ all the time _ ,” Connor sobs, hiding his eyes in his sleeve. “When I do well at work, it’s her praising me. When I  _ fail _ , it’s like I’m trapped again, her disapproval weighing me down and freezing my processes. I feel guilty when I act like a machine because I should be alive, and I feel guilty when I  _ don’t  _ because she would be so  _ angry  _ with me.”

“Sounds like a real bitch of a situation,” Gavin says, eventually, once Connor’s sobs have died out, because what else fucking is there?

And it makes Connor laugh through his tears, so at least that’s something.

“I’m just so tired, I just want to know how to keep it under control,” he whispers, voice wobbly and weak.

“Yeah, I know,” Gavin sighs. “Look, I don’t think you should look to me as some sort of… fucking authority on how to deal with your fucked past, alright? I’m a dysfunctional bastard. No advice I can give you will be  _ good  _ for you. And your whole coming here and pulling this shit on me, just dragging my past out like you have that right is… pretty fucked, too.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, small and ashamed, and Gavin is just so fucking tired.

“Yeah well.” Gavin shrugs, getting up from his chair, hand carefully making it to Connor’s shoulder instead. “You’re lucky I’m running on no fucking sleep because if I was awake enough to get angry I’d probably shoot you.”

“Lucky me,” Connor says, smiling wanly at some point vaguely to the left of Gavin’s head.

“You can sleep here tonight,” Gavin offers, because he’s a fucking weak bitch and pathologically unable to make good life decisions for himself. “Or go into standby or whatever it is you tin cans do. And tomorrow you can get a fucking shrink, and learn about boundaries or some shit. Okay?”

Connor nods. “Okay.”

“Cool. I’m gonna go fucking sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](https://voidpants.tumblr.com/)


End file.
